The Way of the River: Adventures and Meditations of a Woman Martial Artist

""In any sparring match... a person must be utterly in the moment.... The second you jump ahead or fall back in time, you are reminded of the present in a very solid, physical manner."" Thus BK Loren, a black belt in shao-lin kung fu, describes the influence of martial arts on her everyday experience in The Way of the River: Adventures and Meditations of a Woman Martial Artist, her first book. In essays about ""the magnetism of false leadership"" in the person of a violent, controlling martial arts teacher she had as a teenager; fending off her friend's abusive father; seeing beyond the myth of the safety of the suburbs via the stories of her affluent female self-defense students, Loren's careful, direct prose reflects the still gaze of the martial arts expert. (June)